Paloma, Batanga and Cantaritos: Mexico’s long tequila drinks

The Paloma, the Batanga and the Cantaritos all start with 50ml of blanco tequila over ice, add lime and salt, and finish with a soft drink. They are built in the glass, so there is nothing to shake and no water to add, because the ice supplies it. At 40% ABV, 50ml of tequila is about 2.0 UK units and the mixer adds none.

The first three take salt on half the rim. The two ginger drinks are served without salt.

The IBA’s Paloma is 50ml of 100% agave tequila, 5ml of fresh lime and a pinch of salt in a highball with ice, filled up with 100ml of pink grapefruit soda. The soda is about two thirds of the drink. It brings the grapefruit, the sugar and the fizz in one pour, which is why the recipe needs no syrup and only a little lime.

Paloma is Spanish for dove. The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails traces the combination to 1950, when a brochure for Squirt, a US grapefruit soda, suggested mixing it with tequila. The Oxford Companion adds that Squirt launched in Mexico in 1955 and that it is unknown who adapted the idea to Mexican tastes. It places the drink’s rise in Jalisco, where the lime and the salt joined it.

The proportions are not fixed. The Companion’s own recipe is 60ml of tequila and 60ml of grapefruit soda with half a lime and a pinch of salt in a Collins glass, which puts more tequila in the glass than the IBA’s. The Companion adds that many bartenders replaced the soda with grapefruit juice, sugar and sparkling water, while purists keep the soda.

Taste the grapefruit soda cold before you buy a case. With 5ml of lime in the glass, a thin or cloying soda cannot be rescued. Our version follows the IBA and garnishes with grapefruit as well as lime.

The Batanga is 50ml of blanco tequila and 120ml of cola over ice in a highball with half the rim salted, with half a lime squeezed in and the shell dropped after it, stirred once. It is a Cuba Libre with tequila in place of rum and salt on the rim.

Punch reports that Don Javier Delgado Corona kept post behind the bar at La Capilla, in the town of Tequila, for almost 70 years, and that the Batanga was his take on the Charro Negro, Mexico’s answer to the Cuba Libre. Punch dates his first Batanga to the late 1950s or early 1960s and says nobody remembers exactly. Garden & Gun has La Capilla opening in 1961, and the Oxford Companion calls the Batanga a 1950s drink, so the sources do not agree on the date.

The Companion also describes the Batanga as a variation on the Changuirongo, a 1940s Mexican name for tequila mixed with ginger ale, cola or any other sweet soda. Punch says the Batanga took its name when a customer compared the six-sided glass to a bamboo raft. His great-nephew Fabián Delgado Padilla told Punch it is not a Batanga unless the knife that cut the limes does the stirring.

A clean bar spoon does the same job at home, and one stir is enough, because more flattens the cola. Garden & Gun and Chowhound both name Mexican Coca-Cola for the drink, and Chowhound says it is made with cane sugar.

The Cantaritos is 50ml of blanco tequila with 30ml of orange juice, 15ml of lime juice and 30ml of grapefruit juice, built over ice with half the rim salted and topped with 90ml of grapefruit soda.

The name comes from the cup. Difford’s Guide places the drink in the bars, cafés and roadside stalls across Jalisco, usually in a clay pot. InsideHook describes a roadside venue in Amatitán, Jalisco, pouring soda, juice and tequila into giant clay pots shared among groups. The Oxford Companion says that in Tlaquepaque the Paloma evolved into the Cantarito, served in an earthenware dish. No source we have read names an inventor.

Soak the clay cup in cold water before you build. As the water evaporates from the outside it draws heat from the drink, and a dry cup does none of that. Without clay, use a copper mug or the coldest glass you have.

The Mexican Mule is a Moscow Mule with tequila: 50ml of blanco tequila and 15ml of lime in a mug packed with ice, finished with 120ml of ginger beer. We have found no creator or date for the swap. The Oxford Companion says the Moscow Mule purportedly originated in 1941 at the Cock ’n Bull pub in Los Angeles.

The El Diablo adds 15ml of crème de cassis to 45ml of tequila and 15ml of lime, topped with 90ml of ginger beer. Punch dates it to Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink of 1946. Alcademics quotes that first recipe, the Mexican El Diablo, which was topped with ginger ale. Ginger beer is the usual choice now. Its heat stands up to the cassis, where ginger ale lets the drink turn sweet.

Pick a dry, fiery ginger beer for both. The cassis already brings the sugar to the El Diablo, and a soft, sweet ginger beer turns it into blackcurrant squash and leaves the Mexican Mule flat and sweet.

Wet half of the outer rim of a highball glass with a cut lime and roll that edge in flaky salt, leaving the inside bare so no salt falls into the drink. Fill the glass with cubed ice. Add the tequila and the lime first, then pour the chilled soft drink down the side and stir once.

One stir keeps the fizz. Stir again and the drink goes flat. Margarita styles compared covers the half rim in more detail.

The Tequila Ceremony is a shot, not a long drink: salt licked from the back of the hand, 30ml of blanco tequila in one, then a bite of lime wedge. One shot carries about 1.2 UK units. Difford’s Guide says tequila in Mexico is often served straight at room temperature in a small caballito, with a glass of sangrita beside it, and it does not mention salt or lime. We have found no primary record of where the routine began.

The tequila guide explains what the label tells you about the bottle, and tequila or mezcal covers the smoky alternative.